A New Approach for Product Design by Integrating Assembly and Disassembly Sequence Structure Planning

Assembly and disassembly sequences were planned and assessed independently. However, as eco-friendly product design has been enforced by government regulation, it is needed to plan assembly and disassembly sequence at the same time in early product design stage. This paper aims to propose a sequence structure design method by integrating both assembly and disassembly sequence planning. First, graphs represent feasible assembly sequence with components. Second, adjacency matrices are developed to accumulate the sequence information for computational analysis. Third, a black box diagram is applied to understand and consider the functions of a product during assembly and disassembly operations. Finally, factors are determined to overcome gaps between each assembly and disassembly sequence structure. By considering product architecture with Design Structure Matrix (DSM), we can determine modular design for selective disassembly and interface type for assembly. A case study is performed with two coffee makers to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.